Tokyo 2012 SF: Murray vs Raonic - Sat 06 Oct

Would he have to win to remain 3rd? I find these rankings kind of silly, Nadal's been out for a bit now, Murray won the Olympics and US Open, yet Nadal could overtake him by doing nothing? I'd rather the rankings were based on current form, I mean the defending points to me is stupid but whatever.

Try looking at live-tennis.eu to watch the rankings and look at wikipedia to explain them and even then you won't understand fully

I apologise to Laundry,he was right to have anxious feelings over Andy's performance v Raonic. I was wrong. I thought we'd seen the end of Murrays ups and downs with his win in America but we have'ntWhat a scalp for Raonic there will be no holding him now

Don't think it is that much of a scalp. Raonic is always going to be one of those players that give Murray grief. All of the top players seem to have their bogie men. It must be to do with styles of play. When he is on top form Murray will thrash Raonic, when he is not or in a 3 setter then it becomes more difficult.I do worry about his back, given that Lendl was forced out by a back injury, or is it simply the result of playing too much this year? The Olympics brilliant as they were do seem to have caused the top players real problems this year by disrupting their schedule. Aren't they changing the timing of Wimbledon next year to give them more rest?

I haven't seen all of the match, and not sure yet if I will watch it, but I put the TV on right at the start of the third set tie-break. It was a nerve-wracking start to the day.

I am disappointed Andy lost. I think Raonic is one of those players Andy needs to find a way through in a best of three soon, otherwise he could become an issue by getting ideas above his station. However, with a serve like Raonic's the best of three format can run away quickly, so, at least based on looking at the score, Andy put up a fight, which is what we would expect.

It is disappointing that Andy had the lead in the third and lost it. I'd bet my last pound that it was down to mental fatigue. At the end of the day he got to the Wimbledon final, won the Olympics and then won the US, all within weeks, sooner or later something had to give, and frankly it's better now than in Shanghai.

People will go on about Andy 'losing it'. That's fine. But in that situation frustration can boil over, especially when you are probably tired. I don't want Andy to be a robot personally. I would hate him to become like Raonic to be honest, who looks like he couldn't care less either way, and then comes over as seeming more pleased about who he beat than the fact that he won the match.

I think we can all come on here and make smart remarks and stick the boot in by banding words like 'pathetic' about. That's about as constructive as me pointing out that I don't like Raonic, hate his game, and think he's about as close to winning a slam as I am. The fact is that Andy lost a tennis match. No one died and it isn't the end of the world, he doesn't deserve to be pilloried for it, especially by people who seem to take pleasure in banding insults around. How quickly some forget that not so very long ago there were people here who were suggesting that Andy was going to struggle to qualify for the WTF, that Ferrer was going to qualify before him. It was also being suggested that Andy might find himself out of the top four, even the top eight, at year end. Those predictions were way off, just as the insults are now.

I would beg to differ that tomorrow's final is the battle of the future of tennis. The future of tennis, to my mind, is Andy Murray, and today's result doesn't change that. I wish Kei good luck though, I like him.

I'm sure Andy will be disappointed today, but I have no doubt that he will be ready to go in Shanghai.

I think Andy certainly will be annoyed at having lost the advantage and then two match points but I'm sure he will put the whole thing into perspective. It's a 500 tournament, for goodness sake, not Wimbledon!

We must not get down about this. Andy has played many more hours than Raonic recently. Nearly 5 hours at USO final etc. He looked tired to me against Wawrinka and also his back was obviously hurting. He did not sit down in the breaks towards the end of the match which is a sure sign of back problems. Hopefully he will now have time to have some trearment before the next tournaments. The other pointers towards back and tiredness is the net having a magnet and the serve being a little difficult. Hopefully he will give Basel a miss.

He had time off after the USO but went back into training after a exhausting week of press and Dunblane.

Lets just keep willing him on and not worry about this loss. This year Djoko lost his first 500 after winning the AO and also did not do that well at IW if we must compare. Djoko's 2011 was incredible and probably will never be emulated.

Good post tamila. Yes the fact that Andy didn't sit down between changeovers confirms the back is causing him problems. Much as I hate him losing to pugface, that is more worrying. I suspect it means those injections are wearing off. I just hope that he can deal with the underlying problem, He did say in a recent interview he's doing more exercises to strengthen it, which I guess will be Pilates, which I find v helpful for my back. But I'm not putting it under strain playing tennis day in day out. He really must be careful as it really would be a 'disaster' [to cite our resident eeyore] if his back prevented him capitalising on what has been a wonderful year. And if you'd told me at the start of the year that Andy would win USO and Olympics but fail to defend all his titles out East I'd have bitten your hand off. And tj good post also

Andy did have a lot of points to defend during these three weeks in Asia but after that he has very few. If he can go deep into Shanghai, Paris and the WTF he should be fairly secure in 3. I hope he doesn't play Basel but having ducked out from there last year he probably wouldn't want to do it again.

Provided he ends year in top 4 I don't think we should get too uptight about his ranking and allow him to recover so as make a bid for #1 next year. What I would really like is for him to finish his year by winning WTF . That way he'd finish on a high and troughs like today's loss will just be history. He knows Raonic is always going to be tricky for him in the same way Berdych is. So when he's tired and sore and the conditions favour the big server perhaps not such a big surprise he loses.

About Andy's back, I did think during the Wawrinka match that he seemed a bit stiff at times, but I wasn't sure because he seemed to be moving okay. If it's true that he didn't sit down during the match today that does concern me. Still, he has a good team around him. They'll do what needs to be done to get him right.

To be honest, I'm far more concerned about the state of Andy's back than him losing this match - especially after hearing that he wasn't sitting down at the changeovers. Raonic had to play out of his skin to beat a distinctly below par Andy - Andy knows that and so does Raonic!